“Hannah brought back some boxes and bags from the theater in Red Wing and we’ve started going through them. I have a couple more I actually salvaged the night of the fire. Hugh was meticulous about keeping notes on a production and I’d like to overnight some of them to Thea so she can look at them before she gets here on Tuesday, but I haven’t been able to find very much so far.”
“And you’d like some help looking through the boxes.”
“I would,” he said. “If I dropped off those two I have in my rental car, could you sort through them? You know the sort of thing your mother would find useful.”
Owen decided then that he had other things to do. He jumped down and made a beeline for the stairs. Either he was going to look for a Fred the Funky Chicken—Rebecca was always finding an excuse to buy him one of the neon yellow catnip chickens that he loved—or he was planning to prowl around in my closet.
“Of course I could,” I said. “Would it help if I came and got them?”
I heard Ben exhale. “Honestly? Yes.”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes then.” He thanked me and I hung up. I gave Hercules one last scratch and set him on the floor, where he stretched and yawned. “So what are your plans for the afternoon?” I asked.
He cocked his head to one side as though he was considering his options.
“Lie in the sunshine by the front door, maybe? Hide a funky chicken from Owen?”
The cat gave me a blank look.
“Yes, I know you do that,” I said.
He ducked his head and looked a little sheepish. At least as sheepish as a little tuxedo cat could look.
“You could go take a little nap in Rebecca’s gazebo.”
He lifted a paw and gave it a shake. Hercules was a total wuss about wet feet.
“Yes, I know I said it’s going to rain, but not until later,” I told him. “There’s still a lot of blue sky out there.”
His whiskers twitched as though he was considering the nap.
“Or you could go out and look for Professor Moriarty.”
His green eyes narrowed. Even though their little war had escalated during the past couple of weeks, I was beginning to think both the cat and the bird were enjoying the battle. Hercules could be pretty fast on his paws when he wanted to be and I’d seen the grackle fly over literally inches above the cat’s head, but they were both, for the most part, unscathed from their encounters. I had discovered Hercules with one of the bird’s tail feathers recently, but that didn’t mean it was a prize of war, so to speak.
Now he was headed for the kitchen like a cat with a purpose. Clearly, the game was afoot. Or in this case, maybe apaw. I turned to head upstairs and it hit me. I’d invited my mother to stay here, for a week, with me . . . and Hercules and Owen. She wouldn’t think it was odd that I talked to them or that Hercules liked Barry Manilow and Owen didn’t—although I knew she’d be firmly in Owen’s camp on that. But I was pretty sure she wouldn’t understand if Hercules walked through the porch door or Owen suddenly became invisible.
“Hercules,” I said.
He had one paw on the kitchen floor and he stopped and looked back over his shoulder at me.
“Come back here for a minute,” I said.
He sat down and gave me an expectant look. I knew that meant you come over here. So I did, because I didn’t have a lot of time.
I crouched down beside him. “My mother’s coming to stay with us for a few days,” I said.
“Merow,” he said. Translation: I know.
“I need you not to walk through any walls or doors or anything like that while she’s here.”
I felt a little foolish. I knew the cats understood a lot more words than the average house cat, which made a certain sense because they weren’t average house cats. On the other hand, I had no idea if Hercules could comprehend anything I’d just said. For all I knew, what he’d heard was la, la, la doors.
He gave me a green-eyed blink and started for the porch again. I got the feeling that he had understood every single word. Of course, even if he’d understood what I said, that didn’t mean he would actually do what I said.
I went upstairs to get my sweater. Owen’s back end was sticking out of the half-open closet door. It struck me that I wouldn’t mind taking some furry company with me. I pulled the door open a little farther. He seemed to be studying my clothes and he looked at me with a slightly miffed expression at the interruption.
“What do you do when you just stand here staring into the closet?” I asked. “Is this some kitty version of What Not to Wear?”
That got me a look that was pure disdain. Then he went back to eyeing my wardrobe as though I weren’t there.
I reached down and stroked the gray fur on the side of his face, just above his neck. After a moment he leaned into my hand. All was forgiven.
“My mother’s coming on Tuesday,” I said. The only response that I got was a small rumble from the back of his throat. I was pretty sure that was enthusiasm for the scratch he was getting and not because we were having a visitor. The one visitor he got excited about was Maggie, whom he adored. “Could you please hold off on the whole invisibility thing while she’s here?”
He shook his furry head, swatted my hand away and took a couple of steps farther into the closet. Then he just winked out of sight.
I sighed and straightened up. Cats might not get sarcasm when it was directed at them, but they were pretty good at dishing it out.
“Okay,” I said. “I have to go down to the Stratton to pick up a couple of boxes.” I grabbed my sweater off the bed and started for the door. “I’m going to see if your brother wants to come with me.” I counted silently in my head, two . . . three . . . four.
Owen appeared in front of me on four.
“Oh, would you like to come with me?” I asked.
He turned in the direction of the stairs, flicking his tail at me, probably because he didn’t have fingers.
I found Ben in the theater office at the Stratton. There were two desks squeezed into the small room and a coffee machine on a little round table by the door, along with a plate of cupcakes I was guessing had come from Georgia Tepper’s business, Sweet Thing.
Ben had just poured coffee for himself. “Hi, Kathleen,” he said. “Would you like a cup?”
I shook my head. “Is Abigail around, by any chance?”
He took a long drink from his oversize mug, then set it on the metal desk just behind him. “Rehearsal ran long. Some of the cast went for a late lunch and Abigail went with them. Why?”
“It’s not important. I’ll talk to her later,” I said. “Where are the boxes?”
“In the trunk of my rental. It’s just outside.” He pointed toward the main parking lot, where I’d left the truck.
“Thank you again for asking Thea to come,” Ben said as we walked around the side of the old stone building.
“I’m happy to get a chance to see her,” I said. “She’s been so busy.”
“I’m just glad Wild and Wonderful is going dark for the next ten days so she could come. The timing couldn’t be better.” He shrugged. “Otherwise New Horizons would have had to be canceled. You probably know some people think the festival is jinxed?”
“I heard.”
He sent me a sideways glance. “He tried to text me, you know.”
“Hugh?”
Ben nodded. “Before he died. It was around six thirty and we were still rehearsing, so I didn’t have my phone with me.”
My stomach did a little flip-flop. “What did the text say?”
“I don’t know. It didn’t go through and the police wouldn’t tell me.” He exhaled loudly. “He didn’t deserve this.”
“What was Hugh like as a director?” I asked, mostly to change the subject.
Ben gave a snort of laughter. “Hughie could be a royal pain in the ass. He was meticulous, bordering on obsessive. He had this way of breaking down actors so they could get inside the characters. It was ugly, but it seemed to work for him.”